Hackers, Inventors and Startups… Oh My!

By Rob White

I haven’t been in Davis long.  But one of my primary tasks has been to identify and meet as much of the entrepreneurial and tech community as possible in a very short amount of time.

This has included meetings with principles from well-known Davis companies like FMC Schilling Robotics, DTL/Mori Seiki, Bayer/Agraquest, Cedaron Medical, Gold Standard Diagnostics, Calgene, SiGNa Chemistry, Engage3 and others. I have heard stories of how the companies started, what their growth has been like, and what has kept them in Davis to date (or in some cases, moving back). I have discussed some of their challenges and took a keen interest in their industry and how that might relate to future companies that could be in Davis.

And as I shared this information with community members, other tech companies, our city staff and other groups around the region, I continued to find more examples of a blossoming tech industry… one that is rarely the topic of routine conversation, but that can often surprise individuals I share this information with. So I keep digging to find more.

A few weeks ago, representatives from the HackerLab in Sacramento reached out to me and indicated that they would like to find a space in Davis to meet the growing demands from their maker community. According to Gina Lujan, co-founder and director, HackerLab is “community workspace in Sacramento” that has existed for just over a year. She goes on to describe it as a “cool colliding of (tech) evangelists, educators and cheerleaders,” and has grown to 100 members on-site and 800 online (source: Sacramento Business Journal)

community workspace in Sacramento just more than one year ago. Since then, Hacker Lab, described by Lujan as a “cool collide of (tech) evangelists, educators and cheerleaders,” has grown to 100 members on-site and 800 onlinecommunity workspace in Sacramento just more than one year ago. Since then, Hacker Lab, described by Lujan as a “cool collide of (tech) evangelists, educators and cheerleaders,” has grown to 100 members on-site and 800 onlinecommunity workspace in Sacramento just more than one year ago. Since then, Hacker Lab, described by Lujan as a “cool collide of (tech) evangelists, educators and cheerleaders,” has grown to 100 members on-site and 800 online

HackerLab reps have now been in Davis three times in the last few weeks, scoping out potential locations, meeting reps from Davis Roots and identifying potential partnership opportunities. And because of connections made by Davis city staff, they have also met with a rep from the Lawrence Livermore National Lab and several reps from large engineering and technology firms. Though it is uncertain what will happen with a potential location for HackerLab in Davis, it is demonstrative of an identified need for community inventor spaces by an external source.

Davis Roots is also filling a need in the Davis entrepreneurial ecosystem. According to their website “Davis Roots is a non-profit start-up accelerator founded by a team of experienced entrepreneurs, inventors, and academics working to build the next generation of enterprises in Davis… [they] counsel, advise, support, mentor, and host new ventures as [companies] create the plan, build the team, find advisors, and talk to investors. [They] are dedicated to helping connect and grow the entrepreneurial community within the City of Davis, the University of California, Davis, and in the surrounding region.”

Davis Roots was founded in April of 2012 by Professor Andrew Hargadon, director of the Child Family Institute for Innovation & Entrepreneurship and Anthony Costello, a former chair of the City’s Business and Economic Development Commission and founder of several successful start-ups. The Davis Roots facility is located in the historic City-owned Hunt-Boyer Mansion on the corner of 2^nd and E Streets.

Other signs of grass roots activities by inventors in Davis can be found on the alleyway between F and G Streets behind the historic Masonic Building.  In a non-descript, converted garage is the Davis Makerspace community. Still in its formidable stages, Davis Makerspace represents the essence of what a true startup inventor would want, with some basic fabrication machines, 3-D printers and a host of computer software and hardware. Their website describes them as non-profit community workspace for makers and builders, designers and inventors. I met with one of their Directors, Nicholas Weigand, last week and was thrilled to hear about the exciting things that they are doing and have planned for the future.

Just a few days ago, the first spinoff from the Davis Roots incubator received full funding from Kickstarter, an online crowd-sourced funding mechanism. According to their website, Barobo, Inc. was founded in 2010 as a commercial spinoff of technology developed in the UC Davis Integration Engineering Laboratory, and was subsequently a tenant at Davis Roots before moving in to space on G Street in Downtown Davis.

Their website goes on to state that “Barobo, Inc. aims to make robotics more affordable, adaptable, reconfigurable, and reprogrammable for education, research, and industrial applications. Its flagship product, the Mobot, is a modular robot designed for transformative K-12 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education… Robots are the next shop class, which can inspire students to pursue careers in science and engineering.” Additionally, parts for the robots can be created by downloading the computer aided drafting (CAD) files from their website and printing the parts on 3-D printers.

Barobo, Inc.’s target funding exceeded their goal amount by over 114% and included 245 investors. And Graham Ryland, President and Co-Founder credits the efforts of the City and the Davis tech community with being one of the reasons that the word got out and funding was achieved.

The University is a significant part of this ecosystem as well. Just this week I was visiting with Bruce White, the Executive Associate Dean of the College of Engineering. He toured me through the Engineering Translational Technology Center (ETTC) and the Engineering Fabrication Laboratory (EFL). Significant student and faculty ventures are being worked on in each of these university-based facilities and include success stories such as Barobo and Dysonics. Though the ETTC is a relatively new space (opened in fall 2010), they are already meeting the needs and demands of inventors by turning some of the ETTC space in to Student Startup Center to open this fall. This space will be given on a competitive basis and will focus on the talents of some of the University’s best engineering students. The effort is being led by several graduate students working with Bruce White and Jim Olson, resident Business Specialist.

As if this is not enough activities, my discussions with Bruce White turned to the University as a whole. Though I was unable to get information from the internet to validate this, he estimated that there is probably over 2 million square feet of active faculty and student lab space at UCD.  He extrapolated that amount from the over 400,000 square feet in the College of Engineering alone. My search on the internet did lead to the identification of many lab facilities, including the meat lab, computer lab, isotope lab, genome lab, endocrinology lab, agronomy lab, etc. Of course these facilities have specific names and specific missions and activities, but my point is that there is a lot of science and research going on at the University.

So what does this all mean? I suspect it means that there is a healthy, and possibly growing, ecosystem of research, inventors, and entrepreneurs. And as more opportunity sites and facilities become linked and support each other, then we will start to observe the critical mass that so many regions have experienced when fostering this startup culture. It becomes infectious. Students, researchers, faculty, retirees, professionals and inventors start to reach out and connect in interesting new ways.

This is an innovation ecosystem in its simplest form. And we are starting to witness the massing of critical infrastructure, self-organizing in some ways, and absolutely creating a community. My job in all of this is to go find more nodes to the network, create more links, encourage others to get involved. It is a long process, but the early signs seem to be extremely encouraging that we are about to experience a new surge of creativity that is not bounded by traditional systems or institutions.

Thoughts on this subject?  Please let me know. My email is rwhite@cityofdavis.org.

Photo Caption: New UC Davis engineering Student Startup Center opening this fall! Compliments existing Eng Fab Lab.